Fantastic Fenestraz Dominates at the Red Bull Ring

Sacha Fenestraz dominated race two at the Red Bull Ring from pole position, surviving two interruptions from the safety car to extend his advantage in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 championship to twenty-seven points.

The Josef Kaufmann Racing driver was unstoppable on Sunday, with a 1.8 second advantage being pulled out on the very first lap. From there on in, even with the two interruptions from the safety car, he was in complete control, eventually triumphing by 1.214 seconds from Will Palmer.

Palmer, although he was never a threat to Fenestraz, was also relatively secure in second place, with the R-ace GP driver taking advantage of a battle between Gabriel Aubry and Max Defourny at turn two on the opening lap to jump from up from fourth place.

Aubry kept the advantage over Defourny at the start, but the Belgian got a good run on the Frenchman but found himself on the outside of the turn, only for the Tech 1 Racing driver to lock his brakes and run wide, pushing the R-ace GP ace into the run-off, with Palmer taking advantage as a result.

Aubry withstood Defourny’s pressure before the Belgian found himself shuffled down the pack, with race one winner Max Fewtrell ending up pressurising his team-mate for the final spot on the podium, but the Briton was forced to settle for fourth, but it was certainly a breakthrough weekend in the series for the 2016 British F4 champion.

Defourny’s afternoon then went from bad to worse as he fell behind Daniel Ticktum into sixth, before a final lap mistake cost him two more positions, with both Thomas Randle and Yifei Ye getting passed on the run down to the chequered flag.

Robert Shwartzman had an equalling disappointing day to finish ninth, while the final point on offer went to Henrique Chaves, although only in fortuitous circumstances.

Richard Verschoor was running eighth but found himself on the outside of the battle between Ticktum and Randle, with the latter tapping the MP Motorsport driver into a spin, which left the Red Bull-backed Dutchman in the turn three gravel trap.

The first of the safety cars was deployed early on for a two-car crash between Presley Martano and Axel Matus at turn three that left both drivers stranded either side of the track. Martano will take a four-place grid drop for the first race of the Paul Ricard weekend at the end of August for the incident, with stewards determining that the Mark Burdett Motorsport driver was responsible for the clash.

The second safety car was required to retrieve the stranded car of Thomas Maxwell from the outside of turn two after he found himself making contact with Alex Peroni as the Tech 1 Racing driver found himself on the outside of two other cars – Peroni and Thomas Neubauer – only to end up with a broken suspension and out of the race after running out of room.